The invention relates to amusement games, particularly those which require the hand-eye coordination of a participant in controlling the plane for a rolling ball.
Carnivals and amusement parks require games which are challenging to participants, are easy to learn and comprehend, offer a realistic possibility of success, and may be quickly and easily administered by carnival vendor personnel. Frequently, such games involve hitting targets with a thrown object (such as ring tossing games), knocking down targets (such as milk jugs) with a thrown ball, or tossing a ball through a small opening. Additionally, such games often include race type formats where a participant steers some form of object through an obstacle or race course. Other games are directed towards balancing or timing skills.
Many such games provide a controllably sloping planar surface and require the participant to manipulate the planar surface in such a way as to cause a rolling object to traverse a particular course and reach an objective. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,094,507, issued to Kauffman on June 13, 1978, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,258,918, issued to Nishimiva on Mar. 31, 1981, teach bi-axle rotating planes upon which mazes have been provided. By rotating either, or both, axes of the planes, a player can control the movement of a rolling ball on the plane. The object of these games is to manipulate the ball around various maze paths, avoid obstacles, and reach a destination. The games may be quite time consuming as a player may balance the ball at a resting point or cause it to move slowly through the mazes.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,479,033, issued to Crisafulli, et al. Nov. 18, 1969, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,815,917, issued to Brown, June 11, 1974, teach rotating plane games in which players compete to move balls toward opposing objectives. Two well-matched opponents could keep the game going for some period of time.
A carnival or amusement park vendor must have a game which is easy to understand so that players will not be afraid to come forward and take a chance. The game should also be quick to play so that a single player cannot keep the playing facility occupied for too long a period with a single ticket or fee. It is also helpful to provide such a vendor with a game which can be played with little or no attendant supervision.
The games which presently capitalize the controlled plane ball-rolling skill according to the present art are both time consuming and somewhat difficult to learn. Consequently, they are not well suited for the carnival or the amusement park environment. It would be useful to devise such a game which capitalizes on these skills and could also be profitably applied to the amusement park or carnival array of games.